A circle of trees . . . I felt I was bringing the journey home to the ordinary dimensions of my life, rooting it in the place I lived every day. I lay back on the earth and looked up through the branches of an oak, feeling suddenly like the sun was my own heart pulsing up there with light. Wind swirled, and it seemed to me it was my own breath billowing through the branches. The crocus bulbs were buried in my tissue, the cedars growing from my body. The birds flew inside me. Stones sat along my bones . . . a jubilant, stunning loss of boundary, a deeper sense of oneness than I’d ever felt.
I knew that I was part of one vast, universal quilt; I knew that this quilt was itself, the Holy Thing, the manifestation of the Divine One. And I loved this universal quilt, every stitch, color, and fiber, with a heartbreaking love. It was one clear moment in time, like going to the Deep Ground that underlies all things and seeing, really seeing, what is and being pierced by the unbounded nature of it.
~ from THE DANCE OF THE DISSIDENT DAUGHTER by Sue Monk Kidd
A common way of praying for me is to allow myself to move deeply within into the center of self. I may begin by presenting a situation of concern to God and then move into silence. This is a dark (not depressing) kind of praying, but I descend deep into the mystery where there is both peace and silence; I lose consciousness of the time and place in which I exist in the moment and move into the darkness of God, into unknowing... I return to waking consciousness feeling vulnerable and empowered; I experience tenderness and new awareness.
~ from FROM CENTER TO CIRCUMFERENCE by Elizabeth-Ann Vanek
